Religion and the State Religion and the State A Comparative Sociology Edited by Jack Barbalet, Adam Possamai and Bryan S. Turner Anthem Press An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company www.anthempress.com This edition first published in UK and USA 2011 by ANTHEM PRESS 75-76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK and 244 Madison Ave. #116, New York, NY 10016, USA © 2011 Jack Barbalet, Adam Possamai and Bryan S. Turner editorial matter and selection; individual chapters © individual contributors The moral right of the authors has been asserted. Front cover image © 2011 iStockphoto.com/Cosmonaut All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion and the state : a comparative sociology / edited by Jack Barbalet, Adam Possamai, Bryan S. Turner. p. cm. Proceedings of a workshop held July 17–18, 2009 at the University of Western Sydney, Parramatta Campus. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-85728-798-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Religion and state–Congresses. I. Barbalet, J. M., 1946- II. Possamai, Adam. III. Turner, Bryan S. BL65.S8R4455 2011 322’.1–dc23 2011039325 ISBN-13: 978 0 85728 798 4 (Hbk) ISBN-10: 0 85728 798 2 (Hbk) This title is also available as an eBook. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors ix List of Tables and Figures xiii Introduction States, Consumption and Managing Religions 1 Bryan S. Turner, Adam Possamai and Jack Barbalet Part I: From Deprivitization to Securitization Chapter 1 Religion in Liberal and Authoritarian States 25 Bryan S. Turner Chapter 2 Religion in Prisons and in Partnership with the State 43 James A. Beckford Chapter 3 The Secularization Thesis and the Secular State: Reflections with Special Attention to Debates in Australia 65 Stephen Chavura Chapter 4 Secularism, Religion and the Status Quo 93 Gal Levy Chapter 5 Managing China’s Muslim Minorities: Migration, Labor and the Rise of Ethnoreligious Consciousness among Uyghurs in Urban Xinjiang 121 Reza Hasmath Chapter 6 The Tension Between State and Religion in American Foreign Policy 139 Douglas Porpora Chapter 7 Church, State and Society in Post-communist Europe 157 Siniša Zrinšc ˇak vi RELIGION AND THE STATE Part II: From Pietism to Consumerism Chapter 8 Chinese Religion, Market Society and the State 185 Jack Barbalet Chapter 9 Hindu Normalization, Nationalism and Consumer Mobilization 207 Arathi Sriprakash and Adam Possamai Chapter 10 Clash of Secularity and Religiosity: The Staging of Secularism and Islam through the Icons of Atatürk and the Veil in Turkey 225 Meyda Yeg ̆ enog ̆ lu Chapter 11 Gramsci, Jediism, the Standardization of Popular Religion and the State 245 Adam Possamai Part III: Concluding Comments Chapter 12 Concerning the Current Recompositions of Religion and of Politics 265 Patrick Michel Chapter 13 Public Religions and the State: A Comparative Perspective 277 Jack Barbalet, Adam Possamai and Bryan S. Turner ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On 17–18 July 2009, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the College of Arts from the University of Western Sydney cosponsored a workshop, which was held at the University of Western Sydney (Parramatta Campus). The workshop addressed various relationships between religion and the state through comparative investigations of historical cases and contemporary developments, and this edited book is an outcome of that meeting. This volume includes a number of chapters that were first presented at that workshop as well as invited contributions. The editors would like to thank Alan Nixon and Elena Knox for the help they provided with this workshop and book. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Jack Barbalet is a professor of sociology and head of the Department of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is also an adjunct professor in the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney, where he was previously a professorial fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy and a foundation professor of sociology. He has also been a professor of sociology and head of department at the University of Leicester. Jack’s most recent book is Weber, Passion and Profits: “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2008). His recent papers have appeared in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie , the European Journal of Social Theory , Theory and Society , the Cambridge Journal of Economics , Max Weber Studies , the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour , and the British Journal of Sociology. James A. Beckford , Fellow of the British Academy, is a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Warwick and was president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion 2010–11. His recent books include: Social Theory and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Muslims in Prison: Challenge and Change in Britain and France (with D. Joly and F. Khosrokhavar, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Theorising Religion: Classical and Contemporary Debates (edited with J. Walliss, Ashgate, 2006); and The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (edited with N. J. Demerath, SAGE, 2007). His current research interests include religion and the state, prison chaplaincy and Muslims in Europe. Stephen Chavura teaches in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney. His interests include religion and politics, church-state relations in Australia, and the history of political thought. He is the author of Tudor Protestant Political Thought 1547–1603 (Brill, 2011). Reza Hasmath (PhD, Cambridge) is a senior research lecturer in social sciences. His research examines the labor market experiences of urban ethnic minorities, and state and society interactions in China. He is the author of x RELIGION AND THE STATE The Ethnic Penalty: Immigration, Education and the Labour Market (Ashgate, 2011) and A Comparative Study of Minority Development in China and Canada (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), and has edited the collections The Chinese Corporatist State: Adaptation, Survival and Resistance (with J. Hsu, forthcoming) China in an Era of Transition: Understanding Contemporary State and Society Actors (with J. Hsu, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Managing Ethnic Diversity: Meanings and Practices from an International Perspective (Ashgate, 2011). Gal Levy (PhD, LSE) is a senior teaching faculty at the Open University, Israel, and the director of New York University in Tel Aviv. His current interest in religion and the state stems from his long-lasting study of the Israeli ethnicized society. Following his dissertation, which explored the interrelationship between ethnic politics and educational policy, Gal became engaged in various research projects that aim to examine the triad relationship of education, ethnicity and citizenship. His most recent projects include a study on education and citizenship among children of labor-migrants and a large scale research project (coauthored with Dr M. Massalha and supported by an Israel Science Foundation grant) on alternative Arab education. His current book manuscript, which is under review at Cambridge University Press, is a political account of the history of education in Israel and its implications for the construction of contemporary ethnic identities and conceptions of citizenship. Gal has published locally and internationally on these topics, as well as on class and ethnic voting in the Israeli general elections. Patrick Michel is a senior research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, is president of the Political Science and Sociology of Organizations section of the Comité National de la Recherche Scientifique of France, and is full professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He is also the Director of the Centre Maurice Halbwachs in Paris. In addition to his primary interest in Central Europe, his research focuses on the theoretical aspects of the relation between politics and religion. His published works include Religion(s) et identité(s) en Europe: L’épreuve du pluriel , coedited with Antonela Capelle-Pogacean and Enzo Pace (Les Presses de Sciences Po, 2008), and Politique et religion – La grande mutation (Albin Michel, 1994). Douglas Porpora is a professor of sociology in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Although he has written more widely on social theory in books such as How Holocausts Happen: The US in Central America (Temple University Press, 1990) and Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life (Oxford University Press, 2001) , he has NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xi here focused on how Americans deal with macro-moral issues. He is currently writing a book on how Americans debated the 2003 attack on Iraq. Adam Possamai is an associate professor in sociology at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). He is the author of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach (with James Henslin and Alphia Possamai-Inesedy, Pearson, 2010), Sociology of Religion for Generations X and Y (Equinox, 2009), Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper- Real Testament (Peter Lang, 2007) and In Search of New Age Spiritualities (Ashgate, 2005). He is the 2010–14 president of the executive board of ISA RC22 (Sociology of Religion), a former president of the Australian Association for the Study of Religions, and was the 2002–07 coeditor of the Australian Religion Studies Review . He was the program co-coordinator for the sociology of religion section of the recent World Congress of Sociology in 2010 in Sweden. He was also one of the associate heads of school at the School of Social Sciences at UWS (specializing in research), and he is currently the acting director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies. His work has been published in English, French, Spanish, Romanian and Slovakian. Arathi Sriprakash is a lecturer in the sociology of education at the University of Western Sydney. With an interest in education and international development, she has conducted ethnographic research on the local translations of global development policies in the Indian context. Her forthcoming book Pedagogies for Development examines the politics and practices of child-centered education in poor communities in rural India. Bryan Turner is the director of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies at the University of Western Sydney and Presidential Professor of Sociology at the City University of New York. He has held professorships at Cambridge University and the National University of Singapore. He is the founding editor of the journals Body&Society (with Mike Featherstone), Citizenship Studies and Journal of Classical Sociology (with John O’Neill) and an editorial member of numerous journals, including the British Journal of Sociology , Contemporary Islam and the Sociological Review . He edited the New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). Meyda Yeg ̆enog ̆lu is a professor of cultural studies at Bilgi University, Istanbul. She has held visiting appointments at Columbia University, Oberlin College, Rutgers University, New York University, the University of Vienna and the University of Oxford. She is the author of Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge University Press, 1998). She has had numerous essays published in various journals and edited volumes, including: xii RELIGION AND THE STATE Feminist Postcolonial Theory ; Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse ; Nineteenth Century Literature Criticism ; Postmodern Culture ; Race and Ethnic Relations ; Culture and Religion ; Inscriptions ; Religion and Gender ; Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory ; State, Religion and Secularization ; Feminism and Hospitality ; Toplum ve Bilim ; Defter ; and Dog ̆ u-Batı . Her book entitled Islam, Migrancy and Hospitality in Europe (Palgrave-Macmillan) is forthcoming in March 2012. Siniša Zrinšc ˇak is a professor of social policy at the University of Zagreb. His main scientific interests include comparative and European social policy, church-state relations, religious and social policy changes in post-communist societies and civil society development. He is president of the International Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Association (ISORECEA), council member of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR), and vice president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee for the Sociology of Religion (ISA RC22). He has also served as president and vice president of the Croatian Sociological Association, head of the Department for Social Work at the University of Zagreb, and as editor in chief of the Croatian Journal of Social Policy LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES TABLES Table 1.1 Typology of state management 33 Table 5.1 Uyghur and Han population shares in Xinjiang’s major cities, 1991–2000 127 Table 5.2 Labor shares and GDP/labor share ratios (in parentheses), 2000 128 Table 5.3 Sectoral distribution by ethnicity, 2000 128 Table 5.4 Occupation sector concentration and odds ratios by Uyghur and Han population in Xinjiang, 2000 130 Table 7.1 Church-state relations in eight post-communist countries 163 Table 7.2 “Do you think that, during the last decade, the big Christian churches acquired too much or not enough publicity?” (%) 168 Table 7.3 “For strengthening democracy, is it important to ensure that churches would have a role to play?” (%) 169 Table 7.4 “For the economic development of our country, is it important to follow the moral principles of religion?” (%) 169 Table 7.5 Attitudes to the general role of churches in Europe – those who agree (%) (2007) 170 Table 7.6 Donations to religious communities or paid contributions to the church (%) (2007) 174 Table 7.7 Readiness to pay a regular contribution to the church / religious community of church taxes (%) (2007) 175 xiv RELIGION AND THE STATE FIGURES Figure 7.1 Belonging to a religious community: “yes” responses (%) 165 Figure 7.2 Religious self-identification – those who declared themselves very religious and to some extent religious (%) 165 Figure 7.3 Participation at services – at least once a month or more often (%) 166 Figure 7.4 “Is it appropriate when the big Christian churches deal with...?” – “yes” responses (%) 171 Figure 7.5 “Is it appropriate when the big Christian churches deal with...?” – “yes” responses for all countries (%) (except Bulgaria in 1997) 171 Figure 7.6 “Would you say that the churches and religious communities still have too little, or already have too many, of the following institutions?” – “already too many” responses (%) (2007) 172 INTRODUCTION: STATES, CONSUMPTION AND MANAGING RELIGIONS Bryan S. Turner, Adam Possamai and Jack Barbalet When sociologists refer to the contemporary crisis of multiculturalism, they are typically talking about how modern states, especially liberal democratic states, respond to the rise of “public religions.” These religious conflicts and uncertainties about appropriate state responses to them have produced a general retreat from multiculturalism – at least in Europe (Joppke, 2004). More specifi cally, the contemporary problem of politics and religion has been increasingly orchestrated around the global revival of Islam and the emergence of a global Muslim community. However, the particular issues surrounding Muslim minorities in non-Muslim secular societies can be seen as simply one instance of the more general issue of state and religion relationships in modern complex societies. There is growing awareness about the limitations of the Westphalian solution to religious conflicts and hence political theory is undertaking a serious reconsideration of liberalism as the philosophical basis of political strategies to manage conflicting cultural, religious and ethnic interests. In the modern global world where state boundaries have been contested, there is a need to rethink how the competing claims of secular and religious citizens can be articulated and respected within public discourse (Habermas, 2008). This question – how to manage the public expression of religion in multicultural and therefore multifaith societies – is not simply an issue for conventional liberal societies, because religious revivalism and community confl ict raise political issues across a wide spectrum of modern societies. Throughout much of Asia (as subsequent chapters demonstrate), religious evangelism and the prospect of widespread conversions to expanding faiths 2 RELIGION AND THE STATE cause difficulties for states that seek to balance the composition of civil society (Turner, 2009a). States of very different political orientations and ideologies intervene to manage religions in the interests of public order. One example is Singapore, which has a strategy of “upgrading” Islam primarily through the agency of the Singapore Council for Muslims (MUIS) (Kamaludeen, Pereira and Turner, 2009). Singapore might be appropriately considered a “well-ordered hierarchical society” (Rawls, 2001) in which the various religions are not only managed but upgraded through various educational strategies. While Singapore is a small country in Southeast Asia, it presents an interesting social case study from which we can derive a number of sociological lessons. While liberal democracies such as Australia, Canada, Britain and the United States also have similar strategies to manage religions, their religious policies will probably remain primarily implicit and minimal. One example is the difficulty in Britain where governments refused to include Muslims but included Jews and Sikhs under the Race Relations Act; hence Muslims felt they were discriminated against as a minority (Fetzer and Soper, 2005). This case study illustrates the problem which will be examined later as to whether religious groups in secular constitutions should be treated by the law as either voluntary associations or ethnic minorities. This question about the voluntary character of religious organizations was an important aspect of Brian Barry’s criticisms of the immunities and privileges which religious groups such as the Amish enjoyed in liberal societies such as the United States (Barry, 2001). Liberal post-secular consumer societies may be prevented from adopting explicit policies of intervention in religious management and are more likely to continue to treat – or attempt to treat – religion as a private matter, that is to treat religious groups as voluntary associations. Given the liberal commitment to freedom of religion, they will in all likelihood attempt to resist what José Casanova (1994) has called the “deprivatization” of religion by simply ignoring it. However, even liberal societies may be forced, albeit reluctantly, to take an interest in the goods and services that are delivered by religious groups. States have typically taken an interest in the exposure of minors to religious messages, fearing the possibility that they may be exposed to “brainwashing,” and have frequently intervened to monitor, regulate or eliminate so-called “cults.” A case in point is that of Scientology in contemporary France (Possamai and Lee, 2004). Attempts to manage religions in a more general sense may become more common in post-secular societies, especially if religion increasingly dominates the definition of ethnic identity. This opening reflection on the management of religions in the contemporary world lends some support to the somewhat paradoxical claim that “religious liberty is a matter of government regulation” (Gill, 2008: 47). Pressure on the INTRODUCTION 3 state to support religious tolerance will vary considerably in terms of majority- minority religious relations. Whereas dominant religious groups will seek state regulation of minority religions, religious liberty will be more vigorously pursued by marginalized minority religious movements and groups. It is in the interests of hegemonic religions such as an established church to prefer state regulation rather than religious competition in an open market, because their erstwhile monopolistic advantages may be eroded by such open religious competition. Effective governance is clearly more problematic in pluralistic environments, where there is plenty of scope for religious competition and conflict and where trust in governments may be eroded by policies that are seen to favor one religion over another. This problem of the perception of partiality on the part of secular states may explain the relative failure of British governments in their attempts to accommodate a growing and more assertive Muslim community in the late twentieth century (Joppke, 2009). Because virtually all modern societies are multicultural and multiracial, the “management of religion” is an inevitable component of modern government, despite the liberal preference for treating religion as a matter of private conscience and therefore of little overt concern to secular states. In other words, there is a paradox that, precisely because religion is important in modern life as the vehicle of personal identity, it has to be controlled, overtly or covertly, by the state to minimize the costs of government in reducing friction between competing groups and in avoiding more open examples of social conflict. Ultimately, the policies of securitization on the part of states in a global environment of uncertainty and conflict will require parallel policies to manage and regulate religion. These issues constitute the substantive dilemmas that sit behind the philosophical debates of, among others, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. We can read Rawls’ debate about “the original position” as a commentary on Hobbes’ fiction of the state of nature. Rawls (1971) in A Theory of Justice adopts the idea of a “veil of ignorance” to say that we might imagine an ideal future society but not know what our position in such a thought experiment might be. In this hypothetical game, we would be unlikely to describe a slave society for fear that in the future we might be a slave. Reasonable and rational people would want to live in a decent and well-ordered society in which one’s freedom would not impinge on somebody else and one’s wealth would not seriously damage the life chances of another. Out of this thought experiment, Rawls (1993) created his famous model of liberalism in which he argued that a decent functional society was one in which there is tolerance of differences in belief but within the framework of a shared consensus about basic beliefs. However, it was his attempt to extend these arguments to international affairs in The Laws of Peoples (Rawls, 1999) that may be more relevant to our discussion here. In this later discussion, Rawls outlined a typology of societies within 4 RELIGION AND THE STATE which liberal principles might operate. He argued that in a well-ordered but liberal society there would be an “overlapping consensus” of fundamental doctrines (1999: 171). By contrast, authoritarian and hierarchical societies would rule by extralegal means. Rawls regarded his arguments as utopian but nevertheless realistic, because he assumed that reasonable and rational people would, given the veil of ignorance, want a society that was well ordered but also in his terms decent. A well-ordered society would depend less on the coercive force of law and more on the consensus of citizens in whose interest it is to protect institutions that satisfy their collective needs. Barry’s criticism of multiculturalism is probably compatible with Rawlsian liberalism in the sense that an overlapping consensus of beliefs might be difficult to sustain in a society that is too divided by incommensurable doctrines. Jürgen Habermas has also followed John Rawls’ defense of liberal principles in his attempt to extend his original theory of communicative rationality to deal with societies in which religious fundamentalism has been growing. In Between Facts and Norms , Habermas (1996: 61) recognized that Rawls had “certainly shown that a normative theory of justice of the sort he proposes can gain entry to a culture in which the basic liberal convictions are already rooted through tradition and political socialization in everyday practices and in the institutions of individual citizens.” In this respect, Rawls’ political theory was both a normative view of justice and a defense of American democracy as a clear example of a society in which there is a “reasonable pluralism.” In the traditional liberal position, different religions could be accommodated within the civil sphere on the condition that they remained merely private beliefs. Casanova’s commentary on public religions sparked off an important debate about how and whether radical religious doctrines could be accommodated within a Rawlsian “reasonable pluralism.” In recent years, Habermas (2006, 2008; Habermas and Mendieta, 2002) has recognized that the conventional liberal view is in need of repair. He also recognized that the legality of the state was no automatic guarantee of the legitimacy of the public arena, because a well-ordered hierarchical society is not necessarily a wholly legitimate society. The contemporary situation has forced critical theorists like Habermas and pragmatists like Richard Rorty to start taking religion seriously. This is what they mean by the idea of a post- secular society. It does not mean suddenly that social life is pervaded by religion or that the conventional theory of secularization is dead. It simply means that organized religion cannot be ignored or dismissed precisely because it has erupted into the public domain. He has proposed that in a post-secular society it is necessary for both secular and religious citizens to engage in a public defense of their beliefs (Habermas and Mendieta, 2002; Habermas and INTRODUCTION 5 Ratzinger, 2006). It is not sufficient to say that humanism and secularism are self-evidently true or that religious conviction needs no justification because it is based on revelation. Communicative openness is a requirement of democratic norms in a public space and hence customs and beliefs have to be rationally justified and defended. This rule applies, for example, to secular humanists and to fundamentalists alike. There are many aspects of this argument that are problematic. For one thing, holding to a religious belief, for example, in the sinfulness of mankind may be very different from believing that parliamentary institutions can offer a better defense of common interests. Religious beliefs tend to be affective and habitual, not neutral and deliberative. Furthermore, if I am already convinced that my beliefs are true by divine authority, what need have I to defend these in public? In short fundamentalist beliefs (in any religious tradition) may be as a matter of fact incommensurable with liberalism. These conflicts over “fundamental doctrines” become divisive in the public sphere when issues about conversion and apostasy come into play. The public order can become disrupted by radical conversionist movements, as happened frequently in the modern histories of India, Malaysia and Indonesia (Veer, 1996). It is precisely here – over the management of conversion, dress codes, religious education and interfaith marriages – that the state becomes involved in the management of religions. Of course, this discussion of religion and politics has so far tended to assume that we are talking about active citizens in a participatory democracy and active communities of the pious in the religious field. But is the citizen in a decent well-ordered democracy necessarily an active participant? In this introduction, we claim that in modern liberal democracies the active citizen is becoming increasingly a passive consumer in which the traditional bases of effective civic participation through work, public service and reproduction are no longer the fundamental conditions of citizenship entitlement (Turner, 2008). This erosion of citizenship was dramatically illustrated by the credit crunch of 2008–10, in which citizens in Britain, Australia and the United States were admonished by their respective governments to shop in order to save both the economy and the society. The new duty of the responsible citizen is to consume in order to promote economic activity and paradoxically at the same time to save, because personal savings in Western societies are at an all time low. In post-industrial capitalism, there is a permanent tension between asceticism as the legacy of the Protestant ethic and acquisitiveness as the legacy of the consumer boom of the postwar economic strategy of the West. States have also adopted the same sales techniques that were originally developed by the advertising industries to promote consumerism. Political parties increasingly treat citizens as an audience that must be cultivated by sales techniques (focus groups,